Saturday, August 9, 2014

Leaving my job as the crowned prince of hell for greener, less fiery pastures

www.paulickreport.com

Wednesday will be my last day at my current job, bringing to
end a three and a half year long adventure in the world of business-to-business
informative writing.

Since
this was my first, honest to god, on the books job post-graduation, naturally
the process of leaving has awakened many a-feelings.

Part of
me, the part that likes routine and complacency, is in a full-on panic over the
prospect of leaving a job I know inside and out to do something completely different,
somewhere completely different, with a lot of people I’ve either never met or
have only briefly met.

The
side of me that skews towards the negative has already began prepping itself
for me to try something new, totally fail and then have to either a) go
crawling back to the job I’m leaving now or b) spend the rest of my days
cooking boots over open fires near train tracks.

There
is small section of my subconscious that is also super excited to try something
new, but that’s the section that all of the other sections pick on and dunk in
toilets. I know that section is absolutely 100% right and change is good, it’s
just sometimes hard to hear the logic over all the wailing and fearful sobbing
coming from the other sections.

One
area that’s been working overtime lately has been my nostalgia center. It’s gotten
to the point where every time I do anything at work I think, “That might be the
last time I borrow that spoon from the kitchen,” or “After this, I may never have
to clean mandarin orange juice off this desk again.”

I’ve
spent a decent block of time lately thinking about all the things I’ll miss
about that place: the people, parts of the job, taking walks around the
building to clear my head.

I’d go
into more detail, but this is the Internet and an abundance of positivity is
just about the only thing the Internet frowns on.

So
instead please enjoy this list of the Top 5 Things I Won’t Miss About My
Current Job!

Lack of toilets for the fellas. Each men’s room at that
place has one toilet and one urinal. There are three bathrooms on my side of
the building. You math pros out there know that means there are three total
toilets for guys to use. You bathroom pros know that is not nearly enough to
support a small-to-mid-sized staff. To put it bluntly, dudes got to poop. There
is nothing worse than walking that cycle of three a few times waiting for
something to open up while seriously regretting having lunch at the Chinese
buffet. Why didn’t I ever check out the bathrooms on the other side of the
building, you ask? Because that place is a side of mystery where only the
bravest dare to tread.

Urinal door that doesn’t lock. Two out of the three urinals
in the aforementioned bathrooms are out in the open in the bathroom. That’s
fine, it’s standard urinal operating procedure. But one of them is located in a
stall. “Oh, that’s nice!” you might think. “A little privacy for the peeing
gentleman!” Nope. The door to this stall doesn’t lock. What that means is if
the door is even remotely closed while you’re peeing, there’s an 80% that
someone is going to come into the bathroom, not bother to check the feet, and
slam the door open with all his might, scaring the beejesus out of you in the
process. No part of that, none, is good bathroom etiquette! For one thing, you
always check for feet to see if a stall is occupied. You do the little half
bend move, if there’s feet you move on, no feet you’re good to go. On top of
that, why can’t guys just open a door, instead of throwing all of their body
weight into? If you’re not a cop investigating a murder, you don’t need to be
hurling yourself into doors. Go half-speed, guys, it won’t kill you.

Associating with telemarketers. My current job does a lot of
telemarketing. This is a less than desirable trait for obvious reasons. It’s
made things more difficult during average social situations where the
traditional subject of telemarketing comes up (right after the weather and
before local sports teams). Instead of doing the usual “Deport them all to the
moon” routine, I kind of had to sheepishly nod and pray no one discovered my
dark secret. I was like a less interesting or in no way badass “Dexter.”

Blind curves. My entire office building is made up of 90
degree blind turns. The walk to the nearest bathroom has five heart-stopping
turns. The walk to the kitchen? Seven! I can’t go anywhere without turning a
corner and nearly walking directly into someone headed the opposite direction.
Then we both do that thing where we nearly jump out of our skin, mumble either
an awkward apology or an even more awkward greeting (a lot of us are writers)
and then do the dance where we can’t decide who should go which way around the
other person. I need a more open office layout where I don’t have people
leaping out at me like a second rate horror movie every time I want to
microwave my leftovers.

Communicating with cheesed off customers. When your company
does a lot of telemarketing and when those telemarketers are sometimes not
totally upfront with customers about what they’re getting themselves into, it
can lead to problems for people like me who are supposed to communicate with
said customers for stories. I’ve been told off or rudely hung up on many times
during my career for doing nothing more than working for a company that someone
didn’t like. I’m not the problem. I didn’t sign them up for anything, but it
didn’t matter. My favorite example of this is the email I got from a man who,
in broken English, announced that he never wanted my publication in the first
place and that I was, in fact, the devil. The crowned prince of hell. Yup. And
they said that English degree wouldn’t get me anywhere.